Frequently asked questions: images

Where can I get images?

On-campus stock photography

Free

Kalev Leetaru, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign undergraduate, has taken more than 45,000 images of the campus as a personal project. View the Phantasm collection.

Off-campus stock photography

Free (read the fine print carefully!)

Inexpensive

iStockphoto, aks you to either pay for images ($1.50 or less per photo) or contribute to their library in exchange for downloading privileges.

Traditional

Comstock sells photo CD collections, or you can buy images singly through Corbis or Getty Images, who compute their charges based on how you plan to use the photograph.

Custom photography

Although hiring a photographer is more expensive than using stock photography, you'll have greater control over the art and you'll be able to ensure that the faculty, students, and staff in your pictures are actually from your department. This means you won't see them on another university's web site.

Looking for a photographer?

See Purchasing's list of vendors for Professional & Artistic Services
Contact Creative Services at Public Affairs for a recommendation

What software should I use to edit images?

Two of the most popular choices are Adobes' Fireworks and ImageReady. A benefit of Fireworks is that it has fewer options, so it works only for web images, which gives you a more streamlined process. Photoshop is an extremely powerful software program and works for both web and print images, so it is more complex. Either one should be adequate for your image-editing needs.

Any tips for improving my pictures?

Webmonkey has some helpful step-by-step instructions for editing images.

Should I stick to the web-safe 256-color palette?

Because of the limitations of the 256-color palette and the ability of most monitors to show more colors, web designers have largely abandoned it in favor of testing. Public Affairs recommends designing for the needs of the project and then testing on 256-color settings, black-and-white, Macintosh screens, and laptops, to see how your design holds up in all of those environments.

In which format should I save images?

The short answer:

For use on the web, you should save your files as jpg, or gif.

jpg is best for photographic or "continuous-tone" images.
gif is best used for "line art," transparencies or "gif animations". If you have sharp lines, meaning your image is type (a page title for example), a logo, or a drawing, and you want it to stay crisp and clear, you should save it in the gif format. You can also set the background to "transparent" so your image can sit on a colored background.

Note: png files can reduce file size and therefore download time, but many browsers can't open them. Reportedly, IE 7.0 will support transparent png files

More in-depth information

Want to know the full story? Check out these comprehensive resources

Common mistakes to avoid

Don't use your web images in a publication

A common mistake is thinking that print and web photography are the same. As a general rule, it's relatively safe (unless your file is very large) to reduce a print-quality image on a web site, but a very bad idea to use a web image in a printed publication. Images for the web currently need only be 72 dpi (dots per inch), while printed images need to be at least 300 dpi AND have adequate color depth for quality printing. Even if your photo is very large, if it's 72 dpi, don't send it to a printing press!

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